Finland's oldest law firm has had many memorable moments and stories over its 120-year journey. Our firm has had a part to play in many of Finland's historical events.
Founding of Our Firm
Castrén & Snellman at the End of the 19th Century
Finnish Independence
The War Years 1939–1945
Post-War Recovery
Growth Since the 1980s
In 1888, Finland was a primarily agrarian autonomous grand duchy of the Russian Empire. The economy was expanding rapidly. Industry was quickly becoming mechanised and business life was both growing and diversifying. These developments created a demand for legal services, particularly in Helsinki, which had become a centre of business life.
This was the landscape in which Castrén & Snellman was founded by Kaarlo Castrén and Frans Emil Snellman on June 1st, 1888. Messrs Castrén and Snellman announced that they would represent purely legal cases in all of the country’s upper and lower courts and undertake other assignments in the field at affordable prices. In 1896, Castrén & Snellman was entered into the Trade Register under number 1519.
Castrén & Snellman’s first office was in a one-storey wooden building in the centre of Helsinki. At the time our firm was founded, there were no cars on the streets of Helsinki. The city’s first tram line started running in the same year the firm was founded, though the trams, too, were drawn by horses. Our firm’s lawyers were also willing to take cases outside of Helsinki. In practice, this meant making long trips to the countryside by horse and carriage, even in the bitter winter months.
Our firm’s address has changed several times over the years, but has always stayed within a few hundred metres of where it was founded. The central location made it easy for our lawyers to conduct their daily business at the City Court, which was just a short walk away. About half of our firm’s cases at the time were disputes that were argued before the City Court.
Our firm’s first case was handled by Kaarlo Castrén before the City Court of Helsinki on June 8th, 1888. He was counsel for the defendant in a postponed procurement dispute that he had to further postpone, because the firm had only been given the case that morning.
Finland became an independent republic in 1917 after the October Revolution in Russia. Tensions between right wing and left wing factions erupted as a civil war the next year. Despite the war, Castrén & Snellman persistently continued its business.
Up to the 1920s, the firm handled all kinds of relatively small-scale legal work in Finland. Having established a strong reputation, Castrén & Snellman received significant international assignments, for example, when Esso and General Motors established offices in Finland in the 1930s.
During the Second World War, Finland fought the Winter War (1939–40) and the Continuation War (1941–44) with the Soviet Union. During the war, Partner Martti Olsson kept the firm going while the firm’s other lawyers were at the front.
After the Continuation War, Olsson was second defence counsel to President Risto Ryti in the ‘war guilt trial’ in 1945–46. Having an excellent lawyer was not much help to Ryti; the Allied Control Commission had most likely decided the question of guilt in advance, and Ryti was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment.
After the wars, the economy in Finland began to recover. In the 1960s and 70s, companies typically concentrated their collection assignments in law firms. Castrén & Snellman handled this work for Esso and Stockmann, with Esso the firm’s largest client at the time.
In the 1960s Castrén & Snellman represented one of Finland’s major margarine manufacturers in a widely publicised libel case that came to be known as the ‘cat margarine case’. At the time, producers of butter and margarine were engaged in fierce competition. The state’s agricultural policy also had its hand in the matter; the state wanted to support butter consumption, because Finnish farms produced a great deal of butter. The situation came to a head when rumours began circulating the cat fat was being used in the production of margarine. The rumour was started by a 1961 magazine article in Uusi kuvalehti. The dispute between the magazine and the margarine manufacturers was eventually settled in secret. Later the magazine suffered an advertising boycott and was forced to fold.
In 1976, one of Finland’s largest peace-time accidents occurred: an explosion at a munitions factory in the town of Lapua killed 40 people and injured 60. Castrén & Snellman represented the factory’s technical manager in the industrial safety trial that followed the explosion. The trial went all the way up to the Supreme Court, where all the charges against our client and the other defendants were dismissed. The industrial safety trial that followed the accident became a milestone in the development criminal law in relation to work safety in Finland.
After the strong growth of the 1980s, Finland was thrown into a severe recession. Unemployment grew, and many companies were driven into bankruptcy. During these troubled times, Castrén & Snellman administered many of Finland’s largest bankruptcies and restructurings—among them the Kansa Group, Finland’s largest bankruptcy to date.
When the Finnish economy pulled out of the recession and began to grow again in the mid-1990s, the Finnish mergers and acquisitions market also revived. Castrén & Snellman increased its focus on handling major transactions, such as the listing of Konecranes and the construction of the Helsinki-Lahti motorway.
The late 1990s and early 2000s saw Castrén & Snellman branch out into new areas of business law. At the same time, our firm grew to become one of the three largest law firms in Finland.
In 1994, Castrén & Snellman established a subsidiary in St Petersburg to better serve our clients’ interests in the emerging and rapidly developing Russian market. Our St Petersburg office was one of the first offices established by a Finnish law firm in Russia. In 2007, we further expanded to Moscow.
In the time between our firm’s 100th anniversary in 1988 and its 120th anniversary in 2008, the firm grew from employing fifteen people to employing over one hundred and fifty people.
Castrén & Snellman has been involved in many of Finland's historic events, and our journey at the forefront of our field will continue for many years to come.